Quick Dip: Jimmy Lai On Trial
Jimmy Lai, a prominent Hong Kong businessmen and vociferous pro-democracy activist, is facing life in prison in the former British territory in a high profile court case that will serve as a litmus test for civil freedoms in the city. Lai established the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, with the Chinese-language daily launching scathing attacks on China’s ruling Communist leadership whilst consistently calling for democratic reform in Hong Kong. Moreover, Lai himself was frequently seen at the front of pro-democracy marches in the city following the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
However, Lai was arrested and Apple Daily’s offices were raided by 200 police officers in August 2020 under the National Security Law, a piece of legislation that outlawed the, maliciously broadly defined, acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion in Hong Kong which sought to suppress the large-scale protests of 2019 in the city. Jimmy Lai is the most high-profile defendant of the 250 Hongkongers accused under the National Security Law and his court case provides a vital insight into the corrosive influence the legislation has had on civil liberties in Hong Kong.
Prior to the handover, British and Chinese officials signed the internationally binding Sino-British Joint Declaration which rested heavily on a ‘One Country, Two Systems’ model of Chinese sovereignty in the city, wherein from 1997 ‘the current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged’ for fifty years including, crucially, freedoms ‘of speech, of the press’. As Lai faces life in prison under charges of conspiracy to commit foreign collusion and conspiracy to publish seditious material it is evident that such freedoms enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration have been eviscerated by the National Security Law. Furthermore, Lai’s trial poses a clear challenge to the independence of the judiciary in Hong Kong, which is theoretically independent from the executive, critics have labeled Lai’s prosecution as politically motivated and thus serving to further erode Hong Kong’s freedoms.
Lai’s lawyer, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, has criticised the proceedings as akin to a ‘show trial’ intended to further deter and silence Hong Kong’s once vibrant pro-democracy movements with Lai likely to be found guilty of the charges. Crucially, the imposition of the National Security Law was not the first challenge posed to Hong Kong’s freedoms, Lai and Apple Daily helped to mobilise half a million of the seven million population of Hong Kong to protest and defeat an early rendition of the National Security Law in 2003 whilst also proving steadfast in his support for the Umbrella movement in 2014. However, Beijing’s sustained erosion of Hong Kong’s distinct freedoms continued, with Hong Kong booksellers, accused of publishing embarrassing exposes of senior Chinese politicians, smuggled out of Hong Kong and into mainland China in 2015. For many in Hong Kong, Lai’s trial and imprisonment will serve as a visceral insight into the perils and punishments that stalk pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong.
Finally, for those outside of Hong Kong, Lai’s trial charts the swift deterioration of civil liberties in the city, championed by a Hong Kong administration increasingly indistinguishable from Beijing despite the internationally-agreed autonomy promised to Hongkongers. For in the 1980s Hong Kong’s press was celebrated as the ‘liveliest and freest in Asia’, yet in early 2024 Hong Kong’s most prominent media mogul faces life in prison in solitary confinement.